Info You Can Use: Speak Passionately, Persuasively…and Briefly

I love it when, in the course of a few minutes, I come across different web pages that seem to go together like chocolate and peanut butter in a Reese Peanut Butter cup.

In this instance one link was provided by Drew McManus who noted Harvard Business School’s “Elevator Pitch Generator.” Based on the old scenario that you might get lucky enough to gain access to a powerful decision maker in a place away from their gatekeeper staff like an elevator, enterprising people are encouraged to find a way to talk about their idea or business in a compelling way in under a minute. The pitch generator coaches you through the process of formulating that pitch.

After answering who you are, what you do to bring value, why you are unique in delivering value, what your immediate goals are and how the listener is involved in those goals, the generator analyzes the pitch. The generator tells you your word count, how long it might take to deliver it and notes how many times you repeated words. You have the opportunity to revise your pitch or email/print it off for use.

The second web page I came across (I apologize for not properly noting the source of the link) was on Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog. Katya Andresen references Charles Green’s Trust-Based Selling where he talks about the six toughest questions customers ask sales people.

Katya uses this to create the 5 Toughest Questions Donors Will Ask:

1. Why should we choose to donate to your organization?
2. What makes your organization different?
3. What experience do you have?
4. We aren’t interested, why should we pay attention to you?
5. Why is your overhead so high?

She provides suggested answers to each and acknowledges there may be more toughest questions to add by asking readers what tough questions they have been asked.

The response I liked the best was to the last one, probably because it was expounded up at length in a separate blog post of its own.

“This is not about salaries. This isn’t about overhead. It’s about your heroic staff, creating amazing arts programs that transform the people you touch. The end results of your efforts is the story you tell in your fundraising pitch. That’s not self-serving! Your CEO talking about the lives you change is not self-promotion—it’s the beating heart of your mission. Say it loud and proud.

If I were at your arts organization, I’d tell an incredible story about one child touched by a single performance. And I’d say what made it possible was my small, dedicated team. With a donor’s support, more of that magic can happen.

You raise money by talking about the impact of your work—not about budget line items. If a donor demands to see the numbers and asks about pay, tell a great story about one of your staff to illustrate my point: that nothing wonderful happens without a creative, committed team. (I assume your staff isn’t being paid $1 million a piece—that’s something I can’t spin.)

The bottom line: Don’t be afraid of talking about your people. They aren’t overhead – they are change agents. If they do great work, put them front and center in your stories of transformation. To use a theater term, they deserve center stage.”

There is so much focus on minimization of overhead as a measure of a non-profits success, mostly brought on by a very small number of charities paying executives a great deal of money, that it is helpful to have a little guidance on the subject. Mostly, she is reminding us that it is the work that really matters and that is what should be talked about. Saying we need to pay a liveable wage to retain talented people may sound too similar to the arguments banks make that they need to pay big bonuses to retain the top talent for people to make a distinction. It is probably better to focus on the fact you are employing people who bring both talent and passion to effect change and follow Katya’s advice not to focus on the money.

It seems to me that you can use the elevator pitch generator to hone how you talk about your organization, especially to donors. Talking about how people have been affected may need to take longer than a minute to be properly persuasive. But while you don’t want to gloss over a compelling anecdote in order to tell the story of your organization in under a minute, what is said still needs to be lean and to the point.

About Joe Patti

I have been writing Butts in the Seats (BitS) on topics of arts and cultural administration since 2004 (yikes!). Given the ever evolving concerns facing the sector, I have yet to exhaust the available subject matter. In addition to BitS, I am a founding contributor to the ArtsHacker (artshacker.com) website where I focus on topics related to boards, law, governance, policy and practice.

I am also an evangelist for the effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture being helmed by Arts Midwest and the Metropolitan Group. (http://www.creatingconnection.org/about/)

My most recent role was as Executive Director of the Grand Opera House in Macon, GA.

Among the things I am most proud are having produced an opera in the Hawaiian language and a dance drama about Hawaii's snow goddess Poli'ahu while working as a Theater Manager in Hawaii. Though there are many more highlights than there is space here to list.

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